


discidium

by skullmoss



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Flashbacks, Medical Trauma, Other, Pregnancy, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-29
Updated: 2018-06-22
Packaged: 2019-04-14 14:38:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14138109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skullmoss/pseuds/skullmoss
Summary: They take him away from her. She doesn't know why.





	1. discidium

**Author's Note:**

> additional tags are for warnings, although it's not graphic.
> 
> sometimes i wonder if the writers think in-depth about the trauma they put their characters through.

They won’t let her hold him.

Fresh out the womb, the Emperor’s nurses hold him. He’s naked, filthy, as all babies begin. Somewhere deep in her mind is a vision of a young girl swaddled in white, pressed to her mother’s chest, her father leaning over, and as she looks on at the pair and their child a strong hand comes down to rest at her shoulder, squeeze it gently as words of congratulations echo through the room.

There’s none of that here, and she can’t piece together why it feels wrong. But it is, and weakly she reaches out.

“ _My child_ ,” she says, and one nurse turns to look at her, his mouth curling with a disgusted frown.

She doesn’t know what it is, how she came to be here, but as the room remains silent she begins to panic, heart racing and the monitor’s beeping following suit. Something’s wrong. There should be sound, loud and full of life but there is  _nothing,_  save for the quiet murmuring between nurses, a doctor summoning their Emperor, and she knows,  _she knows_ , if they just  _gave her child to her_  things can be rectified.

That there is hope in saving something that she feels is linked to something important to her past. Something she’s unable to remember, but when she looks to the small baby, lifeless and limp in the nurse’s arms, she almost  _can_.

“ _Please_...” it comes out as a whimper. Pathetic. She tries to sit up on the cot, but a firm hand pushes her back, and she’s still too weak to fight back. Every tick that passes is excruciating. The doctor finally arrives, the large looming presence of the Emperor following behind.

She tries to say something to him, licks dry lips tasting of salt from blood and sweat, but no words form and she realizes there’s a needle in her arm, an IV drip keeping her body numb and her tongue fuzzy.

Whatever is being said comes and goes through a sort of fog. Dim, dull, and backs are to her as they fuss over something laid out on a table. Purple, glowing dim.

Why is she here? She cannot remember. Her body aches but she doesn’t know why. She can feel a ghost of a hand brushing her hair back from her brow, a low concerned voice from far away echoing from a lost point in time.

_He holds her. Gentle. Kisses her brow. Gentle. He brings his hand to the base of her belly, cupping it. Gentle._

_“Please, ░░░░░░░. Get some rest.”  
_

_She pushes him aside. Forceful. Ignoring his request to stare up at the blinding white light that feels enveloping._

_“For our child.” He says again. Quiet. A secret between the two of them.  
_

_But when she turns to look at him, his face is a blur, and she reaches forward. To...to...._

There’s a cry. Shrill. Loud enough to break through the fog. Tearing through what is perhaps a memory to bring her back to whatever is happening now. She sits up, relieved though doesn’t know why, and sees a shock of white hair against purple as a few nurses move away to give space to the doctor still tending to the small creature.

There’s a small familiar glow beneath the scrunched up eyes of the small thing. It’s brief, but she sees them as they raise it to swaddle it. She reaches forward, though unable to know why she does so, and from her movement the Emperor looks away from the doctor, directly at her.

Bright eyes staring at her. As though searching for something but being unable to find it.

“The child is alive.” The doctor says, snapping his attention back away from her. “There will still be complications, but with thorough monitoring he will live through them.”

“He?” the Emperor asks. There’s only a small twist of surprise in his voice. It's as though he didn't notice.

“Yes. A prince for the Empire.”

As they speak, she lays back, averting her gaze to stare at the needle in her arm. The voices grow distant, the cries turn to whimpers, and she’s looking for a name.

_“Lotor,” she says, turning to him in bed, hand at his cheek. They’re naked together and it’s the only time she feels of this world, her legs tangled between his._

_“What was that?” he says, propping himself up on his elbow, looking down at her, soft and caring.  
_

_“It’s a good name.” She brings her hands up to bring him back down to her. Her husband. Her Emperor.  
_

_“It’s a boy. I can feel it. I know it. He will make us proud.”_


	2. disciplinam.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> That creature is not his mother.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i never intended there to be another part to this, but then the sixth season happened.

He knows it’s her. The shadowed figure that follows his father: it’s _her_. Not truly her, but just as a corpse had once been someone, this _thing_ had once been her. It’s a shell, nothing more. A spirit possessing and wearing the body of a woman long since dead, eyes glowing and hollow and devoid of the warmth he’s seen in pictures he’s stolen away from the archives, before the royal archivists could truly destroy any evidence of their Emperor’s true past from the lexicon of the New Galran Empire.

He’s a child. Young. A brat through and through and everyone knows it. His face is still round with baby fat that’s easy for his governess to smack when he’s too rowdy, too fussy, un-princely. She doesn’t care about his unpure blood; half belongs to her Emperor and that half remains the only importance as he’ll be the only blooded heir, kral zera be damned. He spends most of his childhood with her and a few other servants who still have some semblance of care and tough love a Galra child is traditionally raised with. His mother would not have raised him this way, and some do comment on his half-breeding.

“She would have treated you softly. Too kindly. It is good that she is dead.”

And it’s true that she is dead.

“Stop crying. You’re acting positively Altean.”

It’s true. He is positively Altean.

But that creature who continues to lurk beside his father is anything but Altean. It’s perverse, ugly. A lowly, shambling creature whose magic is impressive but corrupt, but the small veins of purity he sees in that magic are enticing. It’s taken something and made it unholy, it’s taken _everything_ from him and made it _horrifying_. But through its abilities he sees something he could make pure, make _good_ again.

The creature has never held him. Only looks at him with a dead gaze the few times Zarkon interacts with his child. It’s not allowed to touch him, even if it never showed an inclination to _want_ to.

He’s a young adult now. Thinner and in shape with millennia of training, governess proud of the man she’s shaped him to be. She’s no mother but a sculptor with her whip and harsh but necessary words. He loves her though, in a way one would love their caregiver while loathing everything she stands for. But she was hard, not unkind, and did offer some comforting touches through the pain of training and schooling.

“You are positively _Galran_ ,” she says, proud, deigning to fix his hair before he presents himself to his father as is custom for a prince of his age. He steels himself away, though, offering only the thinnest of smiles as his governess looks at him with unadulterated pride. He knows he needs to ready himself not for his father, but for the creature that ever remains a bitter presence of ruin and destruction of his _better_ half.

“Indeed, and it is all thanks to you.” Words of truth without any genuine meaning of _true_ thanks.

He has no mother. This woman is close, but she’s not of the desired make to what he knows will always be missing. All while the body of his mother _is_ close, it is a body and nothing more. No spirit, no life, only existing to destroy and corrupt.

But he needs no mother. Not when there is the possibility of Altea rising again. He will be the motherless boy to see through to it, the warmth of his people’s light guiding him to the way of purity.

And as he approaches his father, walking past the crowd of Galra, Zarkon’s subjects, _Zarkon’s_ people, he doesn’t look to the decrepit Witch that stands beside the Emperor. He only looks his father in the eye, bows his head, and gets to one knee. He’s pledging himself to his father and to his father’s cause, but deep down he plots to right all of the wrongs his father has committed.

And he will destroy the shambling corpse that stands forever at his side.


End file.
